Complaints to the Telecoms Ombudsman rise 18 percent

Stuart Corner
Monday, 07 November 2011 11:46

IT Policy - Regulation

The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman has reported an 18 percent rise in new complaints for the 12 month to 30 June, reversing the downward trend from FY09 to FY10.

Total new complaints were almost 198,000, According to the TIO, "Mobile phone complaints - relating to Vodafone and the rise in the use of smart phones more generally - were the main drivers of the 18 percent increase in new complaints."

In the year to 30 June 2010, there were 168,000 new complaints, a 4.6 reduction on the previous year. However that drop did little to counteract the massive rise from 119,000 in FY08 to 176,000 in FY09.

Full details of the FY11 results will be contained in the TIO's 2011 annual report, due to be released tomorrow 08 November. However earlier this year the TIO reported a massive 31.5 percent increase in complaints in a single quarter: from the three months to 31 December 2010 (45,262) to the three months to 31 March 2011 (59,532).

Subtracting the TIO's published figures for the first three quarters of FY11 from its total of 198,000 suggests some improvement in the last quarter: new complaints were down to about 51,000. Q1 of Calendar 2011 was the period of the much publicised (and much complained about) problems with the Vodafone network.

In the three months to 31 March 2011, mobile services accounted for 60 percent of all new complaints to the TIO, followed by landlines at 22 percent and Internet services at 17 percent.